WWE World Heavyweight Championship and WCW World Heavyweight Championship were unified into the Undisputed WWE Heavyweight Championship.

Then Disputed by Eric Bishoff who took the WCW World Heavyweight Championship (just named the World Heavyweight Championship in November when WCW name was phased out. DUH)

RAW(WCW) The World Heavyweight Championship

SMACKDOWNWWE World Heavyweight Championship OR The “WWE Championship”

WWE Intercontinental Heavyweight Championship and the WCW US Heavyweight Championship. – Both were Unified at Survivor Series 2001 and the b/c WWE won the SS Main Event the WCW US Heavyweight Championship was “absorbed” into the WWE Intercontinental Heavyweight Championship.

Then Added to the WWE Intercontinental Heavyweight Championship along the way was the WWE Hardcore Championship and WWE European Heavyweight Championship ending those lineages. Even the WWE Intercontinental Heavyweight Championship was absorbed into The World Heavyweight Championship but then brought back.

June10th Stephanie McMahon basically (didn’t say it like Bisch did when he disputed the World Title) Disputed the WWE Intercontinental Heavyweight Championship (just called on RAW The Intercontinental Championship) when she brought back the WCW US Heavyweight Championship (renamed WWE US Heavyweight Championship) This belt was “absorbed” within the WWE Intercontinental Heavyweight Championship

Stephanie is disputing this unification: not creating the title out of thin air.

SMACKDOWNWWE World Heavyweight Championship OR The “WWE Championship”(WCW US Heavyweight Championship)- WWE US Heavyweight Championship

Which brings me to….

The WWE Tag Team Heavyweight Championships and The WCW World Tag Team Heavyweight Championships. They were Unified JUST LIKE the WWE Intercontinental Heavyweight Championship and the WCW US Heavyweight Championship, on the very same night.

So when the WWE Tag Team Heavyweight Championships became exclusive to RAW, the titles were the same titles that had the WCW World Tag Team Heavyweight Championships were absorbed into.

So THEN again Stephanie brings out titles. (This happened before the US title, Chronology is off with this example) and says these are new titles. NEW titles don’t have the same prestige as ones with longs histories. So just like Bischoff before her, why couldn’t Stef, just dispute the WWE World Tag Team Heavyweight Championships (RAW) and because of the SS2001 unification match, claim a lineage of 10 years.

We found out NOW that the US Title has kept it’s own history, just b/c there is no defining name like United States Championship means that b/c these are just Tag Team titles they must be new. Figure these are the WCW World Tag Team Heavyweight Championships, with the name (WWE) in front of World Tag Team Heavyweight Championships (WWE Tag Team Championships)I know Stephanie NEVER said they have that lineage therefore there NOT, but they did it with the US title therefore the Tag Titles should be considered the same way!

Now the WCW Cruiserweight Championship and the Light Heavyweight Championship. The Light Heavyweight Championship was dropped b/c the name Light Heavyweight was held in lower light the Cruiserweight. That is the reason WWE kept the WCW Cruiserweight Championship and renamed it the WWE Cruiserweight Championship. And built a division around the name Cruiserweight!

That leaves us with 8 Championships, in July 2001 we had 11-European- absorbedHardcore- dittoLight-pulled That accounts for the same number that we began with 11

Please let me know what you think, am I crazy, stupid, do I have points to be thought of? Let me knowJOEY I.

Stephanie didn't dispute any of the so-called "unifications", which really don't mean anything in the longrun anymore since WWE has made it a habit of just "un-unifying" them now whenever they feel like it.

The original WWF/E (World) tag title was already exclusive to RAW, so SmackDown! crowned it's own set of champions for their tag division. She didn't go into a big speech ala Bischoff saying how she was "bringing back" the old WCW titles. Of course she could've said that that's what she was doing, as you pointed out. But she didn't. She said it was a completely new championship. Since that's the case, then you can't make a legitimate connection between the two. So the WCW tag title is still dead.

As for the U.S. title, it was "brought back" to serve as the secondary championship for SmackDown!, just as the IC title was resurrected to serve as the secondary championship for RAW. That's all. They could've brought back the European title instead, or created a whole new championship if they wanted to, but they didn't. I suppose they just chose the U.S. title because it has a long and storied history behind it just like the IC title.

Actually, history or not, I think the Smackdown Tag Titles are easily the better of the two right now.

They have been strong since their formation, having ben held by great wrestlers like Angle, Benoit, The Guerreros, and Team Angle. While The Raw Titles have had almost no compitition. On Monday two bottom card new guys got title shots at them. And they put the belts on the French just to feed anti-French sentiment.

Since you asked, I am 27. I have been watching wrestling since 86. I didn't really get into world wide wrestling and wrestling history till 97 or 98.

There's no doubts in my mind that the World Heavyweight Championship on Raw is the same as the former WCW title. It was unified with the WWE Championship in Dec. 2001, and was split again in Sept. 2002, when the WWE Championship became the exclusive property of Smackdown!. Raw claimed the ex-WCW title, and awarded it to the number 1 contender. Pretty straight foward.

The secondary titles are a little weird. The finale of the invasion at Survivor Series 2001 was billed as winner-take-all, with the promotion that won the main event claiming ownership of all titles. Naturally WWE won. However, in an attempt to cut down on the excessive number of titles, a pair of matches was held that led to the U.S. and IC champions being the same person. The U.S. title was then retired. Not unified, retired. WWE messed up the terminology. (Being that the WWE Lt. Heavy title holder, X-Pac, was out injured at the time, there was no such match for the lower weight titles. WWE simple transferred recognition to the ex-WCW Cruserweight title)

Eventually, Eric Bischoff, now in charge of Raw, decided that here were just to many WWE titles, and retired the European and Hardcore titles, giving the last champions of each a shot at the reigning IC champ, Rob Van Dam. No big losses there. However, he took it too far when he retired the IC title itself, though he did give reigning champ Kane a chance at the World Heavyweight Championship. When Stone Cold Steve Austin became Co-GM, his very first act was to rectify Bischoff's mistake and unretire the IC Title. He awarded it to the winner of a battle royal competed by former champs, including last champ Kane. Christian won it. Pretty simple, really.

In a classic case of the one-upmanship that has been part of the split brand story, Smachdown GM Stephanie McMahon then decides to unretire the U.S. Title, awrding it to the winner of a single elimination tournament, won by Eddie Guerrero. She could do that because the title hadn't been made the exclusive property of one of the brands, as it had been retired before the split. pretty simple, as well. Love the new belt design for it, btw.

The Tag titles are the real confusion. The WWF and WCW tag titles were put into one of those Survivor Series matches. Subsequetly, only the now WWE version survived. At one point after the split, those titles became the exclusive property of Raw. Since a promotiuon without tag titles is dumb, Steph was compelled to create a new set of tag titles for Smackdown!. They were awarded in a tournament. The real confusion comes from the name. Since the WWE Championship is exclusive to Smackdown!, Steph was able to claim the name WWE Tag Team Championship for her belts. But the Raw version already had that name. So they defaulted to World Tag Team Championship.

I had previously argued that Steph stripped the titles, and Raw continued to recognize champs because of the WCW lineage, but no one seems to agree with me. Instead, I see now that the Raw titles have the old lineage, but a new name, while the Smackdown titles have the old name but a new lineage. Either way, its mucho confusing.

Originally posted by oknazevad The Tag titles are the real confusion. The WWF and WCW tag titles were put into one of those Survivor Series matches. Subsequetly, only the now WWE version survived. At one point after the split, those titles became the exclusive property of Raw. Since a promotiuon without tag titles is dumb, Steph was compelled to create a new set of tag titles for Smackdown!. They were awarded in a tournament. The real confusion comes from the name. Since the WWE Championship is exclusive to Smackdown!, Steph was able to claim the name WWE Tag Team Championship for her belts. But the Raw version already had that name. So they defaulted to World Tag Team Championship.

I had previously argued that Steph stripped the titles, and Raw continued to recognize champs because of the WCW lineage, but no one seems to agree with me. Instead, I see now that the Raw titles have the old lineage, but a new name, while the Smackdown titles have the old name but a new lineage. Either way, its mucho confusing.

It's not really that confusing or difficult to understand when you actually put it in it's proper context.

Since SmackDown! has the "WWE championship" (the original WWWF/WWF World heavyweight title) and RAW has the "World heavyweight championship" (the old WCW World heavyweight title) it's only logical that the tag title on SmackDown be called the "WWE tag team championship" (a completely new title) and the tag title on RAW be called the "World tag team championship" (the original WWF/E World tag team title)

In reality, both sets of championships are considered "WWE World" titles, but it's just that SmackDown! only uses the designation "WWE" for it's singles and tag titles and RAW only uses the designation "World" for theirs in order to give each their own identity and to try and prevent any confusion (which they've obviously failed miserably at).

i will check back with SS2001 to see teh terminology and post the results...but as for now i do think that the US Title and The Tag Team Titles were unified...with the winner take all match claiming which belt would prevail.

the retired claim...makes sense, except i don't think it was retired

which means that it was apart of the IC title which was RAW property, which is why Stephanie basically disputed the unification of it. alla Bisch in sep 2002

WWE doesn't seem to care about there lineages as much as we do, i find that pretty funny. Bastards never came back with that title history website, which was made nice.

i will check back with SS2001 to see teh terminology and post the results...but as for now i do think that the US Title and The Tag Team Titles were unified...with the winner take all match claiming which belt would prevail.

the retired claim...makes sense, except i don't think it was retired

which means that it was apart of the IC title which was RAW property, which is why Stephanie basically disputed the unification of it. alla Bisch in sep 2002

WWE doesn't seem to care about there lineages as much as we do, i find that pretty funny. Bastards never came back with that title history website, which was made nice.

Considering wrestling is entirely a work of fiction and is basically nothing more than a theatrical form of entertainment, I can understand why WWE doesn't really seem to care all that much about their titles and their histories. It wouldn't surprise me at all if some of their goons are reading this thread and all of the others on this forum right now and are laughing their butts off at all of us marks who take this stuff way too seriously and are actually going so far as to analyze terms such as "unification" and "consolidation", what they mean with regard to championships, and whether or not they mean anything at all period. When you stop and think about it, it is pretty ridiculous. I mean, seriously, I wouldn't be shocked at all if certain people here are actually losing sleep at night thinking, worrying, and trying to make sense out of all this stuff when, in the grand scheme of things, it's all just fiction and means absolutely nothing. WWE certainly realizes that fact. It's just too bad that a lot of us marks are not apparently choosing to see it for what it really is.

Well said Dan. Too much worrying about the details is a bit silly. My previous post was just really a way that I have constructed to make some sense of it. Is it authoritative? No, cause I don't work for WWE. Did I spend much time on it? No, I mostly thought it up in a few minutes while I was typing it up. Its really just for fun. While a deal of consistency on the part of WWE would be nice, I also realize that the radical recasting of their operations that the brand split represents will necessitate a few glossings-over of details. In many ways, it up to us as fans to help them out by creating such explanations. You may ask why we should, but one must realize that only such explanations will make the sport accessible to new fans. And that's what we really want in the long run, to help grow the sport for the future, not to keep it a closed, secretive society.

P.S. My use of "confusing" in relation to the tag titles was meant from an internal, worked standpoint. The real situation is pretty obvious, but this is, I think, the place where WWE has done the best job of creating a dispute between the equivalent titles. The fact that the WWE Tag Titles have been such hot belts since their introduction on Smackdown! has only helped that cause.

P.P.S. As far as I'm concerned, the way that Survivor Series 2001 was so heavily touted as "Winner takes all" trumps any "unification" claims, and therefore the U.S. Title was retired, temporarily, after the event. Likewise, the heavy "end of an era" stuff before Kane's match with Triple H leads me to use the "retired" terminology there.

I just find it funny that both of these titles had to be unretired in the first place. I also find it funny that they're backwards compared to which world title they share shows with, that is the IC Title, which is classic WWE, is paired with the former WCW title, while the U.S. Title, which came over from WCW, is paired with the WWE title. Same thing with the Women's and Cruserweight Championships. Its almost like neither show is purely the decendant of the WWF or WCW. But I guess that's the idea.

my question is..since he next won the WW(f)E world title against Austin, creating an Undisputed Heavyweight Champion, did he for a split second ever become just a WW(f)E heavyweight champion... then Undisputed champion...?

just b/c he won teh world title before the wwfe title

so basically if he wins the world title at Summer slam what number wil it be for him and if he jumed to smackdown (hypothetically) and beat angle what numberwwe title would that be for him?

Hm, well, Jericho has 2 world title reigns over all,one with just the (WCW) World Heavyweight Championship, and one as "undisputed" champion in which he held both the World Heavyweight Championship and the WWE Championship at the same time. So if he were to win the Elimination Chamber match at SummerSlam, it'd be his 3rd world title, overall, and his third run with the World Heavyweight Championship. (note the difference of lower- and upper-case). However, if for some reason he were to go to Smackdown! and win the WWE Championship, it be only his second run with that title, but still his 3rd overall world championship.

But here's the really weird scenario. If Jericho wins the World Heavyweight Championship, and then were to challenge Angle, Lesnar, or whoever holds the WWE Championship, and win that, it'd be his third run with the World Heavyweight Championship, his second with the WWE Championship, but still only his 3rd overall world championship reign, as at no point from winning the World Heavyweight Championship would he then be without recognition as a world champ from somebody. And even more true, it'd still be only his 3rd championship reign if he were to then be stripped of the World Heavyweight Championship and left with only the WWE Championship.

A world championship reign indicates an uninterrupted period of holding one or more widely recognized world titles that are sanctioned by some governing body. The WWE Championship is sanctioned by Smackdown!. The World Heavyweight Championship is (currently) sanctioned by Raw. If one wins a title, then gains additional titles, there is still only one championship reign. that's why the whole Fujinami-Flair, NWA-WCW situation does nothing to increase Flair's total number of championship reigns. (As if 17 times, the correct number, weren't impressive enough.) At no point in time from 11 Jan. 91, when he beat Sting for the NWA title, to when he left WCW in July 91 was he without recognition by either WCW or the NWA, even if the NWA later said he lost their title to Fujinami, which itself was a change from what they originally said, that being a disputed decision.